X-Pro1 first impressions

As a new owner of the X-Pro1 I am extremely impressed with the image quality. I used to shoot film with an (old) Canon EOS 3 and either Velvia or Provia. I kept going with film long after the advent of digital because the results were so much better. I only gave up when it became hard to find anyone proecssing slide film in London. I now have an (old) Canon EOS 400D, a Panasonic GX-1 used mainly by my wife, and the X-Pro1. The GX-1 is very good, but the X-Pro1 is simply streets ahead of anything else I have used. The natural detail you get from removing an anti-aliasing filter is at last returning an image beauty that is like that of film.

The number of photos I take which are "high quality" or "keepers" (by my own standards) has risen instantly. With slde film I got a lot of decent images. In shooting with the EOS 400D, I shot 2-3 photos which I love over the course of several years, even editing RAW files. With the GX-1 I got quite a few really nice images in a few days (admittedly composition is poor as I was playing about, but the image rendition is lovely). With the X-Pro1, you can't stop yourself getting high quality images, even shooting tedious subjects.

The camera offers a wide range of manual control, which is great, and it handles very well too. Two great features: its light enough to carry round your neck all day without any problems, and it packs easily into my carry-on so I can fly with it. Of course, you could say the same about a lot of small cameras - but you wouldn't be getting image quality and handling characteristics that are better than most DSLRs. Built quality is good too - better than the X10s I have handled.

Focus speed is decent in most situations but it's hard to get very short range shots of my 8-month old as he moves around. Mind you, that's true of the EOS 400D and to a lesser extent true for the GX-1 as well. Focus accuracy is pretty good, but you do get out of focus images if you're not careful.

What would I ask Fuji to improve? Focussing speed could be better and focussing accuracy is a second thing. I would also like to be able to shoot at ISO 12,800 or 25,600 and output RAW.

All in all this camera does the basics of still photography very well. Next? I want to investigate how the camera performs when using manual focus.